Importing a powerpoint TIF into a CS3 HD project works fine here.

In the past month, since installing CS3, I can't say I've experienced any of your other problems either (although I havent done titling so can't comment on that one).

But good luck with Mac/FCP anyway.

That's whats frustrating. It's hit or miss with some folks. Not sure why for my situation, as my hardware/software/settings are in spec with adobe's requirements. It could be using a certain kind of mobo, chipset, whatever, (i.e. If I purchased that HP workstation they recommend). Not going there. If I'm going to spend, I might as well chase the combination that is working.

I do plan on paying a visit to the local store in philly, and schedule an appt at their genius bar. I'll see this for myself before purchase.

Well, midnight again, and I've finally managed to start rendering. The project is due at 9am, and I have 5 hours on the progress bar. I spent way too much time manually fixing audio sync issues.

Peter, are you using cineform?

Yes, I'm using 10bit prospect with AJA Xena. Most issues are nags. The audio issue is a project killer and reason enough to uninstall and move on.

I've captured both via the PPro and HDlink capture tools. The issue happens on the timeline (the videos play fine outside the editor). I can watch a single frame of video drop, and the audio continues unphased. I have to unlink and cut the audio track and drag it two frames forward to resync.

Even if I wanted to, I cannot use PPro3. I've already stepped back a few versions in cineform (I keep the installation files just in case). Same issue. I have two workstations with completely different specs and hardware. Same issue.

Update
 

The latest prospect 2k plugin fixed both the playback head freezing and audio sync issues. May have been a cineform issue all along (or fixed adobes issues). No matter, it's working at the present.

Still serious about Mac hardware though, and pressing forward with the switch.

Pete, wondering if you ever made your switch to FCP 6.0 and the Mac Pro.

I completely and utterly agree Premiere is completely unstable. Problems 1, 2, 5, 6, & 7 are experienced on a daily basis for me. And it kills me!

The thing is that I also have a Mac Pro and FCP 6 which I do about half my editing on and while the problems may be in different areas, there are still things about the suite that perturb me nonetheless. Just interested in someone else's thoughts that have gone back and forth between the systems.

Was wondering also... have you switched?

Here's a *free* alternative: download the Edius trial version - I did and will probably say adios to Premiere, while keeping the rest of the bundle for Audio, still, and DVD work. It is rock solid, not one crash even on mixed sources, pretty much any format you can think of... all the way to DVCPRO-HD captured on a MAC, just finished a project. All of this on a modest setup, to say the least.

Give it a try, you might just fall in love...

Ervin, which Edius product is it that you tried & liked so much? I see 4 versions. I have heard good things about it, but never tried any of them. Thanks.

Those do sound like some extremely frustrating problems... Interestingly enough though, I've only run into very few unexpected crashes. Every single one of those crashes happened on a small AMD based HP desktop. I also occasionally see those "low system resource" warnings, but only on the machine I mentioned. I'm thinking it's because the machine in question wasn't really intended to be used as a video editing machine. Anyway, I hope you're liking FCP.

As far as dealing with PowerPoint slides, I always found it worked best to convert each slide to a PSD file in Photoshop, and then import those PSDs right into Premiere. It works like a charm every time!

I would not say I am all that much frustrated with Premiere, in fact Premiere always worked fine for me. The few times I managed to crash it, it was pretty much my fault, I was working with formats Premiere is not "authorized" to work with, like AVC and mpeg variations. I learned, in the process, that I'm better off converting those formats outside of Premier to something that Premiere is made for.

It's just that Edius is better at a few things I need, has support for a wide array of formats for example, all handled without any conversion, just throw them on the timeline and work like it was all the same. The other thing is the lack of the annoying "conforming" step where Premiere creates the waveform for the audio (as far as I understand, someone please correct me if I'm wrong). If you need to see the audio waveform later, it will take some time to produce the graphics, but it's not done automatically at import. Think about this: I am editing a weekly TV talkshow - recently my producer asked me to compile a 3 minute video out of 20+ finished shows... now think about how long it would have taken for Premiere just to import and conform all that footage!!!

Additionally, there are other things that Edius does better or easier, for example starting multicam editing is as simple as hitting one F key, not the whole game of click here, rithgt click there... some eight (?) clicks I counted in Premiere.

On the weak side, audio manipulation is quasi non existing in Edius, so I go back to Audition for that.

The learning curve is... what learning curve? I edited my first video complete with transitions and some effects in minutes after first installing Edius.

I am not here to bash Premiere or advocate for Grass Valley though, this is simply my opinion.

Bill, I am working with the "pro" version - actually they only have three versions, not four... Neo, Pro, and Broadcast. Neo is a stripped down entry level product, sort of like Elements for Premiere, Pro and Broadcast is the same except Broadcast handles in addition a few broadcast formats. You can start with Neo and upgrade later if you like.

how about switching over to vegas? Does that perform better? That way you could keep to pcs, which are cheaper and flexible (and you can build them yourself).

Conforming is not just generating the peak file. It is conforming audio to 16-bit 48kHz PCM, which allows you to work on sample-level, not just on the frame level plus it allows you to import mp3 and other audio format files. This is annoying for long files, however it speeds up the editing in the end.

This is something that for example FCP could really learn from - to import mp3 to FCP you need to convert it to aiff or wav first. Annoying, if you ask me, and takes more time than automatic conversion done by premiere.

Let's try to stay away from the PC vs Mac argument. The idea that PCs are cheaper than macs has been debunked many times as being bogus.

Bart, absolutely correct. BTW, the audio conversion is done in the background so you can continue importing clips and working on your project. BTW, I tried yesterday to compare FCP and Premiere handling of SD clips in a different than default situation. I create, on both programs, a project with a sequence set for 48Khz audio, 16:9 frame. Premiere showed the red line but could play back the video, with black sidebars, almost in realtime. Perfectly usable for editing. FCP on the other hand had two red bars, indicating that both audio and video needed to be rendered and the video didn't play and the audio beeped. So, on the same exact footage, SD mind you, FCP would force you to render while Premiere can get to work immediately.

However, once you start adding effects, Premiere will quickly clog up. Even simple fast color corrector makes the performance go down considerably. And once you've worked in Color, you will absolutely abhor the way that color correction is done in Premiere. Or FCP, for that matter, even if it has some nice buttons like apply to the next shot, that Premiere could use as well.

I think the looniest thing in FCP is that it will not play unrendered text and each small change will make you loose render files. Premiere is so much better at managing rendered files than FCP.